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Restaurants have been smashing their burgers on flat-top grills to create a new breed of burger — and home cooks are starting to follow suit.

The griddle-smashed burgers at The Stockyards on St. Clair Ave. W. have a cult following. So do the ones at The Burger’s Priest on Queen St. E., though the smashing part is downplayed. Now that American chain Five Guys Burgers and Fries has opened in Greater Toronto, expect smashed burgers to infiltrate mainstream consciousness.

“Every patty is well done and juicy,” says Guy Richardson, Ontario manager for Five Guys. “Smashing burgers makes them better — if you have all the right things to do that.”

At the Scarborough branch on Warden Ave., he shows exactly how the technique works.

Fresh Alberta beef, in a special double grind, is patted and weighed into three-and-a-third-ounce to three-and-a-half-ounce balls without filler or seasoning. The balls are stacked in four, with paper between each, and the pile is pressed once with a smasher.

The smasher is heavy, rectangular, stainless steel and has a handle.

Five Guys burgers are cooked to order. Patties are grilled on a 350F flat-top until the sides start to grey. They’re flipped then rounded.

“Then we cook them until we see clear juices coming out on top and the patty is glistening,” says Richardson, adding that health department rules say Toronto burgers must be cooked to 160F, while in Mississauga, York Region and the U.S. most burgers can be cooked to 155F.

Five Guys uses Kraft Canadian cheddar and a proprietary bun. The chain was started in Arlington, Va., in 1986 (yes, by five brothers) and now has about 800 branches. There are 10 in Canada, including ones in Scarborough, Vaughan and Mississauga, and more in the works.

The chain is a favourite of both U.S. President Barack Obama and George Motz, author of Hamburger America: 150 Burger Joints and a film of the same name. Motz has been documenting the hamburger scene for 11 years and has watched the smashed burger trend take off.

“The good news is that the smashed-burger method is actually a way to cook it thin and abide by all the laws of Canada,” he says on the phone from Louisiana. “It’s a very, very uncomplicated thing to do. It’s not supposed to be some big showboat.”

Motz shuns frozen burgers and “gourmet monstrosities” in favour of what he calls “the original American hamburger.” He says White Castle popularized the smashing technique in the 1920s. The technique fell out of favour as char-grilled restaurant burgers took over, but has returned thanks to chains like Five Guys, Shake Shack and Smashburger.

“People always ask, `If you smash it, aren’t you killing it?’ You’re not if you only smashed it once and walk away,” says Motz. “I use a very heavy, inexpensive, completely solid, unperforated, flat, strong-as-hell spatula. It can’t be flimsy, narrow or have holes.

“If you play the rules, you will have an unbelievable hamburger experience.”

Of course, those rules vary from chain to chain and cook to cook. Purists say the ground meat should never be touched by hands, only a metal scoop. In June, Food & Wine sang the praises of griddled burgers and provided a smashed burger recipe from Los Angeles chain Umami Burger.

Before opening The Stockyards in Toronto, chef Tom Davis said “you could never get a good enough burger anywhere.” He read widely about the smashing technique, watched videos at the SeriousEats.com A Hamburger Today blog, and designed his own smasher.

“The quality of the burger is umpteen times better with the griddle because it aids the caramelization process,” Davis explains. “One smash — that’s all. The meat’s not hot and the fat’s not hot, so you’re not squeezing out any of the juices.”

Davis pats his beef into loose, five-ounce balls and salts one side with kosher salt. He puts the ball, salt side down, on the 450F flat-top grill for 30 seconds to one minute with patty paper on top, then smashes it once until it’s about 3/4-inch thick and five-inches wide, removes the paper and salts the top. He cooks his burgers for two-and-a-half minutes per side, using a paint scraper from Home Hardware to scrape up all the caramelized goodness. He butters and grills his Silverstein’s buns and puts a lid over the burger to melt aged cheddar onto it.

Davis likes an 80-to-20 meat-to-fat ratio and his custom grind is 50 per cent chuck, 25 per cent brisket and 25 per cent a secret cut.

“Smashing adds fantastic caramelization and promotes juicy burgers. It puts a beautiful, beautiful crust on the burger,” he says. “Once people try smashing, they become converts.”

He recommends using a cast-iron skillet to make these burgers at home. Other chefs swear by the flat side of cast-iron griddles or any heavy skillet.

At the Burger’s Priest, owner Shant Mardirosian, loves to talk about grinding your own ultra-premium beef with the right fat content but is somewhat blasé about how he smashes cheeseburgers on his flat-top griddle.

“I don’t take it that seriously, I just smash it with a spatula,” he says. “I wouldn’t cook a burger any other way.” The Burger’s Priest slogan is “Redeeming the burger one at a time.”

At Smashburger, an American chain preparing to open in Western Canada in 2012, founder Tom Ryan is also on a mission to “put burgers back in people’s lives.”

“Between fast-food burgers and sit-down burgers, burgers were not being produced in a special way anymore,” he says.

Smashburger has a custom, stainless-steel smasher that resembles a cookie cutter with a back. It sharpens its spatulas every morning to help create the crisp, crusty bottom that’s the holy grail of fans. It uses a proprietary blend of fresh, never frozen, Certified Angus beef that’s formed into loose balls and smashed once on buttered flat-top grills to sear the bottom.

“The sear sets up this great percolation of juices that never leaves the burger,” Ryan explains. “It’s like great, beefy flavour on steroids.”

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